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Facts About Metaphysics
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Book Synopsis Philosophy of the Information Society by : Herbert Hrachovec
Download or read book Philosophy of the Information Society written by Herbert Hrachovec and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second of two volumes of the proceedings from the 30th International Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg, August 2007. It contains selected contributions on the Philosophy of media, Philosophy of the Internet, on Ethics and the political economy of information society. Also included are papers presented in a workshop on electronic philosophy resources and open source/open access.
Book Synopsis Facts and Values by : Giancarlo Marchetti
Download or read book Facts and Values written by Giancarlo Marchetti and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection offers a synoptic view of current philosophical debates concerning the relationship between facts and values, bringing together a wide spectrum of contributors committed to testing the validity of this dichotomy, exploring alternatives, and assessing their implications. The assumption that facts and values inhabit distinct, unbridgeable conceptual and experiential domains has long dominated scientific and philosophical discourse, but this separation has been seriously called into question from a number of corners. The original essays here collected offer a diversity of responses to fact-value dichotomy, including contributions from Hilary Putnam and Ruth Anna Putnam who are rightly credited with revitalizing philosophical interest in this alleged opposition. Both they, and many of our contributors, are in agreement that the relationship between epistemic developments and evaluative attitudes cannot be framed as a conflict between descriptive and normative understanding. Each chapter demonstrates how and why contrapositions between science and ethics, between facts and values, and between objective and subjective are false dichotomies. Values cannot simply be separated from reason. Facts and Values will therefore prove essential reading for analytic and continental philosophers alike, for theorists of ethics and meta-ethics, and for philosophers of economics and law.
Download or read book Metaphysics written by Aristotle and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laura Castelli presents a new translation of the tenth book (Iota) of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with a comprehensive commentary. Castelli's commentary helps readers to understand Aristotle's most systematic account of what it is for something to be one, what it is for something to be a unit of measurement, and what contraries are.
Book Synopsis Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction by : Stephen Mumford
Download or read book Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction written by Stephen Mumford and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to metaphysics offers questions and answers covering such issues as properties, changes, time, personal identity, nothingness, and consciousness.
Book Synopsis The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science by : Theodore Sider
Download or read book The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science written by Theodore Sider and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-19 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics is sensitive to the conceptual tools we choose to articulate metaphysical problems. Those tools are a lens through which we view metaphysical problems, and the same problems will look different when we change the lens. In this book, Theodore Sider identifies how the shift from modal to "postmodal" conceptual tools in recent years has affected the metaphysics of science and mathematics. He highlights, for instance, how the increased consideration of concepts of ground, essence, and fundamentality has transformed the debate over structuralism in many ways. Sider then examines three structuralist positions through a postmodal lens. First, nomic essentialism, which says that scientific properties are secondary and lawlike relationships among them are primary. Second, structuralism about individuals, a general position of which mathematical structuralism and structural realism are instances, which says that scientific and mathematical objects are secondary and the pattern of relations among them is primary. And third, comparativism about quantities, which says that particular values of scientific quantities, such as having exactly 1000g mass, are secondary, and quantitative relations, such as being-twice-as-massive-as, are primary. Sider concludes these discussions by considering the meta-question of when theories are equivalent and how that impacts the debate over structuralism.
Book Synopsis Metaphysical Emergence by : Jessica M. Wilson
Download or read book Metaphysical Emergence written by Jessica M. Wilson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both the special sciences and ordinary experience suggest that there are metaphysically emergent entities and features: macroscopic goings-on (including mountains, trees, humans, and sculptures, and their characteristic properties) which depend on, yet are distinct from and distinctively efficacious with respect to, lower-level physical configurations and features. These appearances give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there any metaphysical emergence, in principle and moreover in fact? Metaphysical Emergence provides clear and systematic answers to these questions. Wilson argues that there are two, and only two, forms of metaphysical emergence of the sort seemingly at issue in the target cases: 'Weak' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a proper subset of the powers of the feature upon which it depends, and 'Strong' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a power not had by the feature upon which it depends. Weak emergence unifies and illuminates seemingly diverse accounts of non-reductive physicalism; Strong emergence does the same as regards seemingly diverse anti-physicalist views positing fundamental novelty at higher levels of compositional complexity. After defending the in-principle viability of each form of emergence, Wilson considers whether complex systems, ordinary objects, consciousness, and free will are actually metaphysically emergent. She argues that Weak emergence is quite common, and that there is Strong emergence in the important case of free will.
Book Synopsis Fact and Value by : Judith Jarvis Thomson
Download or read book Fact and Value written by Judith Jarvis Thomson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A diverse collection of essays, which reflect the breadth of Judith Jarvis Thomson's philosophical work. The diversity of topics discussed in this book reflects the breadth of Judith Jarvis Thomson's philosophical work. Throughout her long career at MIT, Thomson's straightforward approach and emphasis on problem-solving have shaped philosophy in significant ways. Some of the book's contributions discuss specific moral and political issues such as abortion, self-defense, the rights and obligations of prospective fathers, and political campaign finance. Other contributions concern the foundations of moral theory, focusing on hedonism, virtue ethics, the nature of nonconsequentialism, and the objectivity of moral claims. Finally, contributions in metaphysics and epistemology discuss the existence of sets, the structures reflected in conditional statements, and the commitments of testimony. Contributors Jonathan Bennett, Richard L. Cartwright, Joshua Cohen, N. Ann Davis, Catherine Z. Elgin, Gilbert Harman, Barbara Herman, Frances Myrna Kamm, Claudia Mills, T.M. Scanlon, Ernest Sosa
Book Synopsis The Metaphysics of Knowledge by : Keith Hossack
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Knowledge written by Keith Hossack and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2007-09-20 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keith Hossack presents an original approach to philosophy founded on the thesis that knowledge is an absolutely fundamental relation. He takes knowledge as the key to understanding a wide range of issues in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and philosophy of mind and language.
Book Synopsis Every Thing Must Go by : James Ladyman
Download or read book Every Thing Must Go written by James Ladyman and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-07-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every Thing Must Go argues that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science. In addition to showing how recent metaphysics has drifted away from connection with all other serious scholarly inquiry as a result of not heeding this restriction, they demonstrate how to build a metaphysics compatible with current fundamental physics ('ontic structural realism'), which, when combined with their metaphysics of the special sciences ('rainforest realism'), can be used to unify physics with the other sciences without reducing these sciences to physics itself. Taking science metaphysically seriously, Ladyman and Ross argue, means that metaphysicians must abandon the picture of the world as composed of self-subsistent individual objects, and the paradigm of causation as the collision of such objects. Every Thing Must Go also assesses the role of information theory and complex systems theory in attempts to explain the relationship between the special sciences and physics, treading a middle road between the grand synthesis of thermodynamics and information, and eliminativism about information. The consequences of the author's metaphysical theory for central issues in the philosophy of science are explored, including the implications for the realism vs. empiricism debate, the role of causation in scientific explanations, the nature of causation and laws, the status of abstract and virtual objects, and the objective reality of natural kinds.
Download or read book Against Facts written by Arianna Betti and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-07-10 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that the major metaphysical theories of facts give us no good reason to accept facts in our catalog of the world. In this book Arianna Betti argues that we have no good reason to accept facts in our catalog of the world, at least as they are described by the two major metaphysical theories of facts. She claims that neither of these theories is tenable—neither the theory according to which facts are special structured building blocks of reality nor the theory according to which facts are whatever is named by certain expressions of the form “the fact that such and such.” There is reality, and there are entities in reality that we are able to name, but, Betti contends, among these entities there are no facts. Drawing on metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and linguistics, Betti examines the main arguments in favor of and against facts of the two major sorts, which she distinguishes as compositional and propositional, giving special attention to methodological presuppositions. She criticizes compositional facts (facts as special structured building blocks of reality) and the central argument for them, Armstrong's truthmaker argument. She then criticizes propositional facts (facts as whatever is named in “the fact that” statements) and what she calls the argument from nominal reference, which draws on Quine's criterion of ontological commitment. Betti argues that metaphysicians should stop worrying about facts, and philosophers in general should stop arguing for or against entities on the basis of how we use language.
Book Synopsis Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Time and Space by : Michael Futch
Download or read book Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Time and Space written by Michael Futch and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-04-05 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leibniz’s metaphysics of space and time stands at the centre of his philosophy and is one of the high-water marks in the history of the philosophy of science. In this work, Futch provides the first systematic and comprehensive examination of Leibniz’s thought on this subject. In addition to elucidating the nature of Leibniz’s relationalism, the book fills a lacuna in existing scholarship by examining his views on the topological structure of space and time, including the unity and unboundedness of space and time. It is shown that, like many of his more recent counterparts, Leibniz adopts a causal theory of time where temporal facts are grounded on causal facts, and that his approach to time represents a precursor to non-tensed theories of time. Futch then goes on to situate Leibniz’s philosophy of space and time within the broader context of his idealistic metaphysics and natural theology. Emphasizing the historical background of Leibniz’s thought, the book also places him in dialogue with contemporary philosophy of science, underscoring the enduring philosophical interest of Leibniz’s metaphysics of time and space.
Book Synopsis Spinoza's Metaphysics by : Yitzhak Y. Melamed
Download or read book Spinoza's Metaphysics written by Yitzhak Y. Melamed and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-03 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a new and radical interpretation of the core of Spinoza's metaphysics. The first half of the book, which concentrates on the metaphysics of substance, suggests a new reading of Spinoza's key concepts of Substance and Mode, of Spinoza's pantheism and monism, and of his understanding of causation. The second half addresses Spinoza's metaphysics of Thought and presents three bold and interrelated theses on Spinoza's two doctrines of parallelism, on the multifaceted structure of ideas, and on Spinoza's reasons for holding that we cannot know any attributes of God, or Nature, other than Thought and Extension. Finally, the author shows that Spinoza assigns clear priority to the attribute of Thought without embracing reductive idealism.
Book Synopsis Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science by : Matthew H. Slater
Download or read book Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science written by Matthew H. Slater and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of new essays, written by leading philosophers of science, explores a broadly methodological question: what role should metaphysics play in our philosophizing about science? The essays address this question both through ground-level investigations of particular issues in the metaphysics of science and by more general methodological investigations.
Download or read book Laws and Lawmakers written by Marc Lange and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-09 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What distinguishes laws of nature from ordinary facts? What are the "lawmakers": the facts in virtue of which the laws are laws? How can laws be necessary, yet contingent? Lange provocatively argues that laws are distinguished by their necessity, which is grounded in primitive subjunctive facts, while also providing a non-technical and accessible survey of the field.
Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics by : Michael J. Loux
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics written by Michael J. Loux and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2005-09-08 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some of the world's specialists provide in this handbook essays about what kinds of things there are, in what ways they exist, and how they relate to each other. They give the word on such topics as identity, modality, time, causation, persons and minds, freedom, and vagueness.
Download or read book Idealism written by Tyron Goldschmidt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Idealism is a family of metaphysical views each of which gives priority to the mental. The best-known forms of idealism in Western philosophy are Berkeleyan idealism, which gives ontological priority to the mental (minds and ideas) over the physical (bodies), and Kantian idealism, which gives a kind of explanatory priority to the mental (the structure of the understanding) over the physical (the structure of the empirical world). Although idealism was once a dominant view in Western philosophy, it has suffered almost total neglect over the last several decades. This book rectifies this situation by bringing together seventeen essays by leading philosophers on the topic of metaphysical idealism. The various essays explain, attack, or defend a variety of idealistic theories, including not only Berkeleyan and Kantian idealisms but also those developed in traditions less familiar to analytic philosophers, including Buddhism and Hassidic Judaism. Although a number of the articles draw on historical sources, all will be of interest to philosophers working in contemporary metaphysics. This volume aims to spark a revival of serious philosophical interest in metaphysical idealism.
Book Synopsis The Metaphysics of Truth by : Douglas Owain Edwards
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Truth written by Douglas Owain Edwards and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is truth? What role does truth play in the connections between language and the world? What is the relationship between truth and being? The Metaphysics of Truth tackles these fundamental philosophical questions and develops a distinctive metaphysical worldview. Moreover, it does so in a climate where the traditionally central issue of the nature of truth has diminished in significance due to the rise of deflationary and primitivist views, which deny that there are interesting and informative things to say about truth. Douglas Edwards responds to these views, and demonstrates the importance of the metaphysics of truth with regard to both the study of truth itself, and metaphysical debates more generally. He also develops a detailed pluralist metaphysical approach, which starts with the diversity of different subject areas, and holds that there are different relationships between language and the world in different areas, or 'domains'. He develops a pluralist approach which explains what domains are; how different domains are individuated; which metaphysical frameworks apply in different domains; and how truth plays a key role in the picture. The picture is extended to incorporate ontological pluralism - the idea that there are different ways of being - which increases the explanatory power of the view. Edwards gives particular attention to important domains which have not yet received a great deal of attention in debates about truth, namely the institutional and social domains, and thus connects work on the metaphysics of truth and being to key issues in social construction.
